EPISODE 427: WHEN YOU GET TO THE BOTTOM YOU GO BACK TO THE TOP

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

We had not one, but two earthquakes this week. In a way it was like when you get a milkshake and you’re like oh my God that was so everything I have to have another, but then right away it’s just a completely different experience and you don’t like it anywhere near as much.

Except, of course, it’s an earthquake. The ground is literally moving in ways that everything in the whole of your life has taught you is not what ground does. So even if the quake is small – and both of these were so minor in intensity by the got to us here in West L.A. that the alarm app we all have on our phones in case of a quake never even went off – one is plenty.

What an earthquake feels like:
(And in case it’s not clear: I have almost zero experience with earthquakes. So this isn’t me busting out with the expertise. I'm just sharing my own small thinking-things-through.)

You know that science idea – #physicstalk – that everything is made up of very tiny particles that are constantly in motion, that our whole notions of “stable” and “solid” are only true from our way up high and from the action point of view?

Well, imagine that gradually you came to be able to feel those particles moving. Like the wall behind you is almost trembling – but internally, not at the surface (at least at first).

The first earthquake I was ever in, it felt like that. ++ What an earthquake feels like:
Imagine that you begin to have a sense of the world around you somehow beginning to roll. Once again, it’s a gradual thing. If it only happened for a second you would miss it. But it goes on, these “waves” that are both long enough and flat enough that they don’t really scare you by their presence as much as what they might foreshadow. Is this the quake or is it all the little animals of the forest fleeing a T-Rex?

And probably you should flee too, but because it’s so gradual and so unexpected, you just sit there gently rocking with it.

And then slowly, ever so slowly, it rolls away.

The first earthquake I was in this week, it felt like that. ++ What an earthquake feels like:
It starts similarly to yesterday, the gradual waves. Slightly stronger, but still long, flat.

But immediately it is different too because the last one was yesterday.

And this one goes a long time. About twice as long as yesterday, and that one was already maybe five times longer than you’d ever known. It goes so long that you hear the building crack. Just a small crack, but still. And then it happens again. And because this house is on a bluff, maybe twenty feet from the edge, you wonder, is it the building cracking, or is the bluff?

And yet it’s still so relatively gentle, you still don’t do anything but just lie there, waiting out. Using the fact that it petered out and didn’t come back yesterday as some sort of new rule about how these things work. It’s not the shaky hand held camera of the movies, it’s not a sudden slap of a giant’s hand against the ground or the building. It’s these gentle waves.

Although down deep some part at the back of your mind whispers, how long is this going to go? And behind it lies the conviction that if this goes long enough it will have other not gentle consequences whether it seems okay or not.

When it’s over, first you feel relieved. Time to check in on Earthquake Twitter. We’re all okay (again).

But then fifteen, twenty minutes later you realize you’re feeling some echo of those waves still, but inside you. It’s like a weird kind of motion sickness, but how can that be? It wasn’t even 60 seconds.

The second earthquake I was in this week, it felt like that. ++ What an earthquake feels like:
I’m driving yesterday down the 105 toward a reception for a nun who has spent over 40 years doing ministry with young adults at a jail that is about to be closed. And on the drive I’m listening to The Big One, a podcast produced by a local public radio station last year to help people think about preparing for an earthquake.

And as I’m driving I start noticing every time I approach an overpass. And I’m paying attention to what kind of distances I’m keeping between me and other cars. Not because I think there’s about to be another earthquake, but because there is going to be another earthquake at some point, and they’re saying there should be another one sometime this week no matter what, and what are the chances I’ll be in my room a third time, and I have never really thought about earthquake safety in a real way at all.

So for a few minutes it’s like I’m playing Musical Chairs but with the freeway. And I’m honestly not sure that’s a bad thing.

It’s not just driving either. It’s where do I leave my computer when I leave my room? On my desk, where it’s exposed, or inside my desk, where it might not be. Do I have shoes and water under my desk? That pile of stuff that I’ve been wanting to get rid of, do I really want that still here if there’s a big shake? And all the delicate things on my shelves – the snow globe my nephew gave me; the chalice and paten from my friends on the rez; the little plastic X-Wing fighter that’s been pretty much everywhere with me for most of my Jesuit life – maybe it’s time to wrap them in cloth and pack them somewhere safe for a while.

If you know sometime crazy is bound to happen at some point, and that unlike say, Hurricane Katrina, it will come without warning – except of course we did just two have other earthquakes of very significant sizes, so it’s more like the joke about the guy in a flood who wants God to help him and then refuses the boat and the helicopter and drowns, and in Heaven all God can say is, “Who did you think sent those?” – if you know that, how does it change the way you live, what on a day to day basis you do? ++ Probably the most mind-blowing single idea I ever learned studying philosophy was David Hume’s notion that everything we believe to be true is predicated on a false assumption that the universe has some kind of internal consistency. “If gravity has worked every day for all existence, it’s going to work tomorrow.”

Nuh uh, says Hume. Not necessarily. Sure, give me science, give me data, give me lived experience. But none of that is to say tomorrow couldn’t different.

For me, earthquakes are like that. Also this:

++ Been popping any culture this week?

I have definitely been up in there.

Spider-Man: Far From Home: I thought the previews were eh. I don’t know a way of describing the actual movie that doesn’t sound about the same. Honestly I want to say it’s only fine, but actually I liked it a lot more than that. A lot more. And man did they put some spicy mustard on the pitch at the end.

Toy Story 4: Is a story about a spork that insists it’s garbage darker than a film where all the toys are almost burnt alive? Probably not. But it’s pretty dark. And I liked it a lot.

Dollars to donuts Bo Peep should be a Disney princess. She just kills it in this movie. And there's an interesting idea at the movie's center: that being broken, discarded and/or a dirty used spork is okay. That who you are is enough. I know, it sounds like every other animated film, except this movie doesn’t say, with breathless young person earnestness, Hey, you don’t have to be broken! It says, with old person wisdom, Hey, your brokenness is fine, it’s its own kind of cool. Which is a very different thing.

Stranger Things 3: Season 3 just came out, so I don’t want to spoil anything, but let me just say if you like Dustin and/or movies from the 80s that I cannot name but including one which goes on a REALLY long time, you will probably like this season.

Also, for the record, Will is my favorite character and never gets enough to do to satisfy me, and no one can be furiously, overwhelmingly powerful in one moment and then exhausted to the point of tears in the next like Millie Bobbie Brown. ++

If you're a comic book fan this headline will fill you with rage.
If you're not a comic book fan, show it to someone who is and watch them go. ++ LINKS ++ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks with Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish teenager who decided to skip school every Friday to protest about climate change at the Swedish parliament and started an international movement.

It gets a little in the weeds at times, but there are some gems. For instance, AOC and GT both talk about how everything felt overwhelming and impossible to them until they started to act. That even just protesting by yourself is an incredibly empowering act.

...Hope is not something that you have. Hope is something that you create, with your actions. Hope is something you have to manifest into the world, and once one person has hope, it can be contagious. Other people start acting in a way that has more hope.

If you liked Chernobyl, here’s an article from PBS that answers the question you haven’t asked: Why didn’t all the plants die? (It has to do with an absolutely crazy flexibility about plant cells that pretty much prevents them from getting cancer and totally makes me want to be Swamp Thing for the first time ever.)

Also, stick around for the last paragraph, which is basically the article suddenly rising up from its pleasant public news format, ripping of its clothes to reveal it is actually Ric Flair and then bodyslamming us down.

Lastly, wouldn’t it be nice to believe that maybe randomness has more to do with success and failure than we think? (Or is that just me?)

It’s 11:30pm and I’ve got three things that I’m supposed to be turning in tomorrow, none of which are um, ready yet. So yeah, better go.

Seas can surge, air can blow, land can even move. But they won't last. You keep going.

See you next week.